Telangana Assembly unanimously ratifies GST Bill

Hyderabad: The Telangana state legislature on Tuesday ratified the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Bill passed by the Parliament early this month. [caption id=“attachment_2983424” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] File image of K Chandrasekhar Rao. PTI[/caption] Both the houses unanimously passed a resolution ratifying the GST Bill (122nd Constitution Amendment Bill, 2014). In the state assembly, Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao hailed the passing of unanimous resolution and said this would set a good precedent. As soon as the House met for the special session to ratify the bill, the Chief Minister moved the resolution. He said the bill need to be ratified by the legislatures of half of the states before it is presented to the President for his assent. He told the House that nine states had already ratified the bill, which will introduce a uniform tax system for the entire country as is being followed in 150 countries. Rao said no state was ready to let go its tax revenue and all states had urged the Centre to protect their interests. He told the members that the Centre has assured that it will compensate the states for any revenue loss caused to them on account of implementation of GST for a period of five years. The Chief Minister said the services sector would expand with the implementation of GST and the state would benefit from this as it will have 50 percent share in service tax. “Currently the service tax is under the central government. With GST, the state will get 50 percent share. This will benefit the state which is ahead in sectors like e-commerce and software exports. The service tax in the state is growing at 35 percent,” he said. The Chief Minister also informed the House that the passing of constitutional amendment bill was just the beginning of the process as the GST council will have to formulate modalities and prepare tax structure in consultation with all states and only then it will go to Parliament in the form of a bill for its approval. Members of ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), opposition Congress party, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and others supported the resolution. In legislative council, Deputy Chief Minister Kadiam Srihari moved the resolution, which was unanimously passed after members cutting across party lines supported it.